


Passim

by earlgreytea68



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 00:00:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: Patrick's writing a dissertation on the poet Peter Wentz.Peter Wentz's great-grandson Pete is kind of hot.Oh, and also there's a ghost, happy Halloween.





	Passim

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to corinne, glitter, carbon, spring, Q, etc. (who am I missing???), who were talking about Patrick's insistence that he doesn't know what Pete's lyrics mean and inspired the comparison to those academics who are sure everyone in history was just "good friends." 
> 
> Thank you so much to the Discord crowd for all the sprinting and cheerleading, snow and laudanum and snitches and dani and cin and etc.
> 
> Thank you also to the organizers, who never fail to keep us rolling around in wonderful fic! We're spoiled!
> 
> (also this says it was posted on November 1 and I just wanted the record to show that it's 7:30 on Halloween night where I am so HALLOWEEN IS JUST GETTING STARTED HERE AND THIS IS TIMELY, HAPPY HALLOWEEN lol)

Patrick has already checked the address three times.

He looks again at the skeletons littering the lawn and checks it a fourth.

It stubbornly stays the right address.

Patrick sighs and sticks the piece of paper back in his pocket. He supposes that he’s come all this way, so there’s nothing for it but to take the last few steps.

Okay, it _is_ almost Halloween, so it makes some sense that there are skeletons all over the generous lawn leading up to the old Victorian mansion. They’re plastic skeletons, Halloween decorations, makes total sense.

Except that these particular skeletons are all arranged in, well, sex poses. There are skeletal blowjobs going on, and skeletons taking it from behind doggy-style, and reverse cowgirls, and...a lot. There’s a lot. It’s a lot to take in.

He’s on the front porch still trying to take it all in when someone answers his knock.

“Oh, hey. Pretty awesome display, right?” says the voice behind him, and Patrick turns.

And Patrick is looking at Peter Wentz.

Patrick should explain: He knows he’s not looking at Peter Wentz. That would be impossible. Peter Wentz has been dead a hundred years. The Peter Wentz who lives in this house now is Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz the _Third_, the descendant of the nineteenth-century poet Patrick’s been eating and sleeping and breathing as he works on his dissertation. He knows the person who opens the door isn’t _his_ Peter Wentz, the one whose words he’s been living in for so long that they get stuck in his head like a melody. He knows it’s the modern-day Peter Wentz. But he hadn’t expected the modern-day Peter Wentz to look _so much _like the single romantic portrait of Peter Wentz that still survives. It’s disconcerting.

Modern-day Peter Wentz has wandered out onto the porch with Patrick and is still talking enthusiastically about his Halloween display. “I’m hoping to work my way through the entire Kama Sutra eventually, but it may be a lofty goal.”

Patrick stops staring at Peter Wentz’s profile long enough to look out at the skeletons. He says, “None of them enjoy the missionary position, huh?”

Peter Wentz laughs. “Careful, now, I might think you’re boring.”

Patrick bristles a little bit. “I’m not.”

Peter Wentz is still smiling at him. “I believe you. What can I do for you?”

“You’re Peter Wentz III,” Patrick says.

“Pete Wentz,” he replies. “I’m Pete Wentz.”

“I’m Patrick Stump,” Patrick says. “I emailed you? About your great-grandfather's diaries?”

“Oh, right, yeah, of course,” says Pete Wentz, and shakes his hand. “Patrick. Good to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Patrick replies politely. “Could I see the diaries, please?”

Pete looks amused by him, which Patrick supposes is better than being annoyed by him. “Right down to business, huh? This way.”

Patrick follows Pete into the house. The foyer is dim, done in dark woods, with almost no light penetrating the stained glass around the door, and the rooms leading off of it are too shadowy to see. Pete walks past a swooping staircase crowned with a carving of a bat and through a set of paneled double doors into a library. Heavy drapes are drawn over the windows, so Pete flips a light on. There’s a single old-fashioned chandelier that would have been more at home dripping in candlewax. Lights flicker to life inside of cloudy crimson shades, casting the whole room in a hellish red tint. The walls are lined with bookshelves full of books.

Pete says, “Sorry, sunlight damages _everything_ in this house, this floor is basically in darkness all the time. It’ll be a nightmare to work in here, you’ll want to carry things out to another room, I think.”

Patrick tears his eyes away from the bookshelves. He wants to catalog every single volume on the shelves and see what insights they give him into Peter Wentz, but that’s a distraction for another time. For now he’s get to get this Ph.D. He says, “Could I just borrow the diaries?”

Pete’s eyebrows raise. “Oh,” he says. “Okay. I didn’t realize you didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?”

Pete walks over to the far side of the room and indicates a shelf. “These are the diaries.”

Patrick looks at the leatherbound books carefully lined up. There’s a lot of them. “Okay,” he says slowly.

“And also this shelf.” Pete points to the shelf below. “And also that shelf.” Pete points to the shelf above. “Great-Grandpa Peter had a lot to say.”

Patrick blinks in astonishment. “There’s... There must be like a hundred volumes.”

“A hundred and two,” Pete replies. “My dad started to have them catalogued by date, but then he got bored.”

“A hundred and two...” Patrick trails off. He was planning on spending two days here. Two days.

Pete says, “Yeah. So. I’m thinking it’s going to take a while.”

***

The grad student kid is looking stunned.

He’s also very pretty, the rosy glow from the chandelier highlighting the blush on his cheeks and the copper in his hair. Pete Wentz isn’t his great-grandfather, but he could write some poetry about this kid.

When Pete got the email from a Patrick Stump, seeking access to his great-grandfather's “papers,” Pete spent a moment staring at it. His great-grandfather was at best a minor poet, and nobody ever really knows about him. Pete grew up in this living monument to a poet no one’s heard of anymore. Everyone’s forgotten him but the Wentzes. But Pete’s dad (the second Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz) and grandfather (named, dramatically, Sonnet) were both utterly devoted to Peter Wentz’s memory, keeping everything in the house pristine, as if any minute now pilgrims were going to make their way to the door. Pete grew up in this gloomy mausoleum and escaped as soon as he could.

And then came back. Because his dad died and the house became his and he didn’t know what the fuck to do with it. He couldn’t bring himself to sell it; he didn’t actually want it but he didn’t want anyone else to have it, either.

Besides, it’s useful to have somewhere to live, because, well, being a wandering bass player troubadour isn’t paying his bills yet.

Anyway, the point is, Pete would have bet all the money he didn’t have that there was no one left in the universe who remembered minor poet Peter Wentz, and then he’d gotten an email out of the blue from a Patrick Stump writing his dissertation on _the poetry of Peter Wentz and its place in the larger pantheon of emerging Modernism_. Pete had lifted his eyebrows at that, and then agreed to give Mr. Stump access to Great-Granddad’s diaries, because maybe, finally, his ancestors’ careful shepherding of this house might turn out not to have been for naught.

Pete had not expected the grad student to be a snack. _Thank you, Great-Grandpapa Peter_, he thinks, as Patrick Stump chews on his beautiful bottom lip and studies the shelves of diaries. His eyes behind his glasses look worried – what Pete can see of them, what with the cloudy light flickering off of them.

“I can’t…” Patrick sighs heavily. “I was only planning on staying two days.”

Pete shrugs. “You can stay longer.”

Patrick laughs humorlessly. “I really can’t. I shouldn’t even be here _now_. Students loans don’t exactly cover extravagant extended stays in touristy hamlets in upstate New York during leaf-peeping season.”

Oh, being short of cash: that Pete gets. And this house is good at helping out with that. “You can always stay here.”

Patrick looks at him sharply. “What?”

“This house is full of abandoned bedrooms, I mean, honestly, it’s creepy. And it’s just me here. So you should stay. Have one of the bedrooms. You can even have Peter’s if you want.”

“Peter Wentz’s?” Patrick echoes in a whisper, like he can scarcely believe his luck.

“The very same,” Pete replies. “Peter Wentz the First. Not my bedroom. I mean. You could have my bedroom, too. If you like.” Pete tries a leer on for size, just to see how Patrick will react.

Patrick is way too fixated on Peter Wentz the First to notice. “I can’t just, like, sleep in his _room_. Oh, my God. That’s like… Isn’t that like blasphemy? Do you let people do that?”

“Look. Snack bar.”

“Huh?” Patrick says, eyebrows skidding up toward the swoop of ginger hair across his forehead.

“That’s what I’m going to call you,” Pete says.

“What?” Patrick sounds faintly alarmed. “Why?”

“Why not? Anyway. Snack bar. You’re the only person who actually cares about Peter Wentz, dead poet.”

Patrick frowns. “No, I’m not. I’m really not. People just don’t _know_ about him. I’m trying to change all that. I want him to be respected for the genius that he was.”

“That’s sweet of you. You can still sleep in his bed. He was no Morrissey.”

“_Morrissey_?” says Patrick, staring at him.

“Come on, it’s this way, I’ll show you,” says Pete, heading out of the library.

“It’s his _bed_?” Patrick says, hurrying to catch up to him.

“I mean, he didn’t die in it,” Pete says.

“No, he died on the grass in the morning dew, with the fountain beside him splashing in the sunlight.”

Pete pauses with a foot on the first step of the staircase and looks at Patrick. He wonders if he should say _He was drunk and tripped down the stairs on the back terrace and cracked his skull against that fountain_. But Patrick, with his beautiful lips parted, looks passionate in his belief and Pete doesn’t want to ruin it. “This way,” he says, heading up the stairs.

He hears Patrick start up behind him, and then say, “Hang on. I have a ‘why not’ for you.”

“Why not?” Pete repeats, confused.

“Why you shouldn’t call me ‘snack bar.’ Because my name is _Patrick_.”

Pete smiles as he heads down the hallway. “I can call you that, too.” He pushes open the door to Peter Wentz’s bedroom. “Ta-da!”

The bedroom is as goth as the rest of the house. Honestly, Pete admires his great-grandfather’s commitment to aesthetic. The wallpaper is blood red and the fireplace is dark marble carved with bats and skulls and hearts – his great-grandfather’s weird trinity that’s all over the house.

Patrick makes a small sound that makes Pete’s cock twitch. He’s looking at the bedroom like he wants to swallow it whole. Pete’s cock gets sad it’s not the object of that look.

Pete says, “You can go in, you know.”

“In?” Patrick echoes faintly.

“In the bedroom,” Pete prompts, and gives Patrick a little nudge.

Patrick steps into the bedroom and turns immediately to face Pete. “I can’t possibly stay here,” he says.

Patrick is pale in comparison to the oversaturated color of the rest of the bedroom, his coppery hair fluffing over his forehead picking up the extra-red highlights of the room. His teeth are worrying at his ridiculously lush lower lip. He looks perfect in this room. He looks _perfect_.

Pete smiles at him and says, “You’ll be fine.”

***

Patrick is trying to behave like a thoroughly ordinary human being instead of a hysterical fan.

He’s not sure he’s doing such a great job.

Like, probably a thoroughly ordinary human being wouldn’t be _freaking the fuck out_ over a bed.

“Pull yourself together,” Patrick whispers to himself in the middle of Peter Wentz’s bedroom, where the current Pete Wentz has left him. “This dude’s going to throw you out of the house for being weird.”

But Patrick kind of can’t help it. In the pursuit of his dissertation, Patrick has spent so many hours with no one for company but Peter Wentz. Patrick feels sometimes like Peter Wentz is the only friend he has left. Patrick knows Peter Wentz inside and out, and Patrick has talked out loud to Peter Wentz in his more desperate moments, cursing his dissertation advisor, complaining about bureaucracy, bemoaning the fact that the Peter Wentz papers were in an out-of-the-way house Patrick barely had the money to get to.

And now he has just been invited to stay _free of charge in Peter Wentz’s bed_.

Patrick puts a gentle hand on the bedspread, which is a pale pearl gray not at all in keeping with the rest of the room. This is definitely not original, Peter Wentz definitely did not choose this bedspread. But the bed is ornately carved with bats and hearts and skulls and, at the head of it, a distorted bat with a weird jagged heart inside it. Patrick has never seen the design before, but it feels like a Peter Wentz poem to him: dark, dramatic, and off-kilter. He takes a picture of it with his cell phone.

Then he says, “Well, Peter. It’s just you and me. And your great-grandson, I guess.”

The long, blood-red curtains hanging at the window snap forward with the force of a breeze, the gust of air sharp and cold as it buffets into Patrick, and Patrick walks over to close the window…Only the window is already closed when he gets there.

Patrick frowns and leans forward to tap on the glass, as if maybe he’s misunderstanding what he’s seeing, when there’s a knock on the door instead.

Patrick jumps a mile, keyed up, and shouts out, “Who is it?”

There’s a moment of silence, and Patrick’s heart thuds in his eardrums, and now he’s wondering if he imagined that, too, like he apparently imagined a gust of icy wind.

Then Pete says, “Uh, Pete?”

Patrick strides quickly across the room to tug open the door, snapping, “Jesus Christ, you scared me half to death.”

Pete blinks at him. “I… Okay. I was just coming back to tell you that when I said you should get some rest before dinner, I didn’t want you to think I was actually, like, making dinner. I can only make ramen noodles. And cereal. Is that what you want for dinner?”

“I don’t care,” says Patrick, and looks back over his shoulder, because he could have sworn he saw something move out of the corner of his eye.

“You okay?” Pete says. “You seem… You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Patrick says hastily, and steps out of the room, closing the door firmly behind him. “You know what? I should go back to the inn and get my bag—”

“Oh, it’s being sent up. Perks of living in a small town. Everyone knew where you were going, so when I called to say you’d be staying here, they said they’d send your bag up.”

“Right,” Patrick says. “Right. Yeah, of course. Awesome.”

Pete is regarding him curiously. “Sorry. Was that wrong of me? I thought you’d want to get started with the researching right away. Or with, like, rolling around inappropriately in my great-grandfather’s bed.”

“I wasn’t going to do that!” Patrick protests.

One half of Pete’s mouth turns down dubiously.

Patrick can’t possibly say that he gave himself a stupid fright in the bedroom that now he can’t shake so instead he says, “You’re right. Research. I would like to start my research before dinner.”

“You heard what I said about dinner, right?” says Pete.

“Uh-huh,” says Patrick, who can’t be bothered to think about anything but putting distance between himself and the creepy bedroom. He walks swiftly down the hallway toward the staircase.

“Okay,” Pete says heartily. “Ramen noodles it is, I guess.”

“Sounds good,” Patrick says, not listening, and he doesn’t really breathe until he gets into the library. The library, with its eerie, flickering light, should not feel safe, but books are a thing Patrick understands. Maybe he was just freaking out at having to spend time in a room without books. Here he is, in the library, and it’s better.

Patrick steps forward and pulls Volume One off the bookshelf.

***

Pete isn’t used to having a roommate, and this is a weird one. Patrick’s been in the house two hours, and so far Pete can’t figure him out. He went into raptures over the old bedroom, then fled the old bedroom and hid in the library. He hasn’t spoken a single word to Pete since entering the library, and Pete keeps going to hover in the doorway, uncertain, wondering if he should interrupt or not.

Eventually, he puts some of the pizza he ordered onto a plate and grabs two beers from the fridge and decides there’s no point having a hot academic in your house if you don’t at least try to talk to the hot academic. Patrick’s probably going to be bored with Pete immediately, but, hey, might as well try to get into his pants first, right?

“Knock knock,” Pete says, because he doesn’t have a hand to knock with.

Patrick looks up from the diary he’s reading. It’s gone dark outside, and the room in the light is even starker than it was before. Patrick looks weary behind his glasses, but also thoroughly caught up in whatever world he was in. Frankly, Patrick looks like a romantic poet himself, his fluffy red-gold hair askew on his head, his glasses slipping down his nose, his rosebud mouth—

His _rosebud mouth_, Pete catches himself. Yeah, he’s never getting into this guy’s pants with lines like that.

“Food,” he says to Patrick, and indicates the plate. “You should eat.”

Patrick blinks from the pizza to Pete. “Wow,” he says inscrutably.

Pete tries to interpret it and fails. He looks at the pizza and then back up at Patrick and says, “Is that…a good wow?”

“It’s a… It’s a ‘wow, no one’s paid attention to me enough to make me eat in a really long time.’”

Pete hesitates, then says, “Well, that’s a shame,” because it is. Patrick should clearly be the object of all attention everywhere. Pete hands Patrick the plate of pizza and says, “I brought a beer, too…?” and holds one up.

It’s obvious he’s got two, and Patrick’s eyes travel over to the second one before saying, “Yeah, sure, stay,” and reaching for the beer.

Pete bounces happily onto the couch with Patrick and at least tries to pretend he doesn’t want to interrupt Patrick’s flow. “I mean, if you’re really deep in what you’re doing, I can always—”

“No,” Patrick says, and sighs. “No, I probably shouldn’t be deep in what I’m doing, I should probably talk to an actual human who’s not Peter Wentz.”

Pete waits a moment before saying, “Except I am Peter Wentz,” and sips his beer.

Patrick smiles around his own swallow of beer before saying, “Not the Peter Wentz I meant. Although, you look a lot like him.”

Patrick gestures to the portrait on the wall. Pete doesn’t turn around, because he knows what the portrait looks like, and he knows he bears an uncanny resemblance to it.

“Different eyes, though,” Patrick muses. “Your eyes have more gold in them. Like, his eyes are just brown, and your eyes are… I’d never really call them brown, they have more in them.” Patrick takes a bite of his pizza.

“Are you talking to him or to me?” Pete asks, uncertain.

Patrick smiles. “You, actually.”

Pete reflects on the level of familiarity Patrick just displayed regarding his eyes.

Patrick says, “It’s John Singer Sargent, so I’m sure that’s an accurate portrait. Your eyes are just…_yours_.”

Patrick is looking into Pete’s eyes as he speaks, apparently the better to make the comparison with the portrait, but that close, intent eye contact makes Pete have to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from shivering closer to Patrick.

Then Patrick’s eyes drop to Pete’s lips and that doesn’t help matters _at all_.

“Same mouth, though,” Patrick murmurs, still staring at Pete’s lips.

Pete licks them reflexively, he can’t help it.

Patrick, after a second, shakes his head and looks away and clears his throat and says, “Sorry. I’m being creepy.”

“No, you’re not,” Pete says hoarsely, because that’s not the word Pete would use.

“You must be so tired of the dregs of society showing up at your door telling you look like Peter Wentz,” Patrick says, with a tiny self-deprecating smile.

Pete blinks at him, and then he says, “Okay, hang on, you clearly have a very…_unique_…impression of the mark my great-grandfather left on the world.”

Patrick looks at him, honestly quizzical. “What do you mean?”

“You are the first person I’ve ever met who even knows who he was,” Pete says. “The townspeople think this memorial house bullshit is hilarious. That’s why they were so fascinated by your showing up here to research.” Pete shrugs and take a sip of his beer.

Patrick stares at him. Then he says, “_What_? How can that be?”

“Why, is he super popular at your college?” asks Pete, genuinely confused.

“No, but I thought, like, I just thought the academy was pretentious. Like, he should have a cult following, right? Like…like Byron.”

“Byron doesn’t have a cult following, Byron straight-up has a following,” remarks Pete drily.

“Like _Poe_,” says Patrick.

“Patrick, have you ever met anyone else who knows Peter Wentz?”

“There are, like, a few people on Reddit…” Patrick says faintly, trailing off.

Pete smiles at him gently and says, “Eat your pizza, you’ve forgotten all about it in your shock over Peter Wentz’s obscurity.”

“That’s not deserved,” Patrick says fiercely. “He’s a _fantastic_ poet. That’s what I’m trying to do with my dissertation: recover his reputation.”

Pete doesn’t have the heart to tell Patrick that he is seriously overvaluing Peter Wentz’s self-indulgent emo poetry. He says politely, “Well, we Wentzes thank you for your service. I mean, I’m the only one left but my gratitude is immense.”

Patrick, to his surprise, scowls. “You’re mocking me.”

“No,” Pete says, “I promise that I’m not.” He doesn’t believe in Patrick’s fervor but he’s not trying to _mock_ him.

“You live in this house preserved to his memory. And you don’t even like his poetry?”

Pete makes a face. He doesn’t really want to talk about this. He says reluctantly, “It’s hard to…live with a ghost.”

Patrick’s face goes even paler than it already was. “The house is haunted?”

“No,” Pete says. “Not literally. I mean, like…” Pete gestures all around them, to the locked-in-time library. “This should have been remodeled, let’s face it. We shouldn’t still be sitting in the light cast by a blood-red chandelier. Also, my great-grandfather was _obsessed_ with blood-red, have you noticed?”

“You would change this?” Patrick sounds aghast. “To what?”

“Blue,” says Pete. “I like blue. I mean, I respect the whole emo thing my great-grandpa had going on, but I’d like some blue, and maybe something golden. But no. I live here, in this house designed by him.” Pete points a thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the portrait. “Because my dad, and his dad before him, were convinced that one day, somebody was going to care about Peter Wentz.”

Patrick looks around the library and says softly, “I care a lot about Peter Wentz.”

_About the wrong Peter Wentz_, thinks Pete immediately, and that’s silly, because he just met Patrick and he just wants a silly fling, but also, well, Pete is _lonely_, and Patrick is the first person to show up at this door and _stay_ in a really long time, and okay, fine, sue him, but this Peter Wentz would really like somebody to care about him as passionately as Patrick cares about the first Peter Wentz.

Pete says dully, “That’s good. That’s great. I’ll leave you to your reading,” and reaches for the empty plate that once held Patrick’s pizza.

“I’ve upset you,” Patrick says anxiously.

“Nope,” Pete says as he stands. “Not at all. And I’m sure you’ve made _him_ very happy.” Pete nods at the portrait of his great-grandfather as he leaves the room.

***

Patrick frowns after the current Pete Wentz, uncertain, and then turns his gaze to the portrait on the wall, the first Peter Wentz smirking down at him. It’s a famous portrait, as portraits go, a classic in art history books, Peter Wentz’s presence forceful in it, louche and engaging on the surface, sad and lost underneath. The portrait is more famous than Peter Wentz, and it was part of the reason Patrick set out to change that. With a meager dissertation that no one would ever read. But still.

He didn’t expect the current Pete Wentz to be so…arresting. Patrick’s been maybe half in love with a portrait for the past few years. Now he’s got this real-live flesh-and-blood person in front of him, with more swirling complexity than Patrick’s had to deal with in a while. Peter Wentz’s words on paper are malleable, Peter Wentz doesn’t fight Patrick on his theories and interpretations, Peter Wentz just passively _is_.

Pete Wentz is a different story altogether, and maybe it’s just been too long since Patrick interacted with a human, or maybe Pete is especially fascinating, maybe it makes total sense that Patrick wants to put the diary aside and go in search of Pete and say, _No, wait, I don’t want to read about the past, tell me about you, now_.

Or maybe he’s just off on some wild flight of fancy, like imagining that gust of cold air up in the bedroom.

Patrick tries to go back to the diary he’s reading but even thought Wentz’s writing is as engaging as it always is, Patrick can’t focus. Maybe he should give up for the night. Maybe he can read in bed.

For a second, he contemplates the notion of going back into the bedroom with dread, and then decides he’s being exceptionally silly. The bedroom is fine. It’s Peter Wentz’s room. He should be delighted by it. What the fuck is wrong with him?

Patrick takes the diary up the staircase with him. The first floor is darkened, and the staircase is lit only by flickering old lights in a converted candelabra up at the top of it. It casts spooky shadows all up and down the walls and Patrick suppresses his shudder. This house makes his imagination work overtime. It’s ridiculous.

There’s light spilling out from underneath a closed door along the hallway, music playing behind it. Metallica. Patrick pauses, his hand twitching toward the door like he’s going to knock. Which is ridiculous. What’s he going to say when Pete answers? _Hey, do you maybe want to talk about music? Do you maybe want to just talk? It’s been a while since I talked to someone?_ Oh, yeah, that sounds great. Patrick grimaces at himself. _It’s been a while since I talked to someone and you’ll do_, is what that sounds like. When what Patrick means is, _It’s been a while since I talked to someone because you’re the first person I’ve met in a while who makes me want to know more about them_. That also sounds terrible, though, like Patrick is a terrible person.

Patrick walks firmly away from Pete’s closed door and into Peter Wentz’s bedroom.

He looks around it like he’s expecting real blood to be dripping from the walls or something, but the room is perfectly ordinary. Patrick really is losing his mind, he thinks.

His bag is set in the middle of the bed, and he pulls out sweatpants and a t-shirt to wear to bed. He didn’t pack for an extended stay. He’s quickly going to exhaust the overnight bag.

He frowns, then decides that sounds like a problem for tomorrow. He gets ready for bed, changing in the en-suite bathroom, clearly an addition that post-dates the first Peter Wentz, although not by much, considering the decidedly ‘70s color scheme.

He gets into bed with the diary, gets himself all nice and cozy, blankets tucked up around him, pillows propped up against the weird bat carving on the headboard. It started raining outside at some point, and it’s pattering pleasantly against the window, and Patrick feels very warm and safe in the bed. Silly, silly Patrick, he thinks at himself, getting himself all freaked out over nothing.

Patrick opens the diary and the fucking curtain at the window snaps toward him, bringing with it a furious gust of wind and a damp smattering of rain.

Patrick yelps and puts the blanket over his head, and then after a second thinks he’s being stupid and the blanket isn’t going to help him anyway. He pokes his head out carefully. The curtain is still waving at the window, although not as energetically as it was.

Patrick gets carefully out of bed and goes over to the window to close it.

And the fucking thing is once again already fucking closed.

“Okay,” Patrick says out loud, because he thinks hearing a human voice is a good thing. “Stop it. This is ridiculous.” He doesn’t know who he’s talking to. The window? Himself? A _ghost_?

He turns from the window and is immediately drenched in a torrent of rain all along his back, ice cold water.

Patrick flees the fucking room, running so fast he falls directly into Pete’s arms in the hallway, and then collects himself to run past him.

Pete says, bewildered, “Patrick, what the fuck—”

The bedroom door Patrick left open slams shut at the end of the hall.

Patrick, at the top of the staircase, squeaks. He looks down at the dark first floor and can’t bring himself to run down into it. Instead, he edges back against the wall, thinking that maybe finding a corner might be safest.

Pete looks down the hall, and then back at Patrick. “What was that?”

“I think your great-grandfather hates me,” Patrick says in a rush.

Pete stares at him, then replies slowly, “My great-grandfather is dead.”

Patrick shakes his head. “It was raining _inside the room_.”

Pete says, “Patrick…”

Patrick squeezes his eyes shut. “I know I sound crazy, I _know_ I sound crazy, don’t make me go back into that room.”

“…Okay,” says Pete.

“Can I stay in your room?” asks Patrick desperately. Now is not the time to have _dignity_, the ghost of his hero hates him. 

“……Okay,” says Pete.

***

Pete was letting Metallica form the soundtrack to his self-pity. Hot academic in his house way more interested in mooning over his great-grandfather’s portrait than in looking at him. _Whatever_. He’s allowed to feel a little mopey, okay? It’s totally allowed.

And then Patrick starts squealing and Pete walks outside to find out what’s going on and anyway, the whole thing ends with Patrick walking into Pete’s bedroom and saying, “Thank you for sharing your room with me.”

Pete’s a little dazed. Part of him wants to say _If you wanted to sleep with me, you just had to ask_. But Patrick looks pale and shaken and Pete doesn’t think this is a ploy. Patrick is genuinely freaked out.

So Pete says, “No problem. I was just…” _Listening to music feeling sorry for myself_.

Patrick looks at the guitar gathering dust in the corner and says, “Do you play?”

“Uh, yeah,” Pete says, sitting on his bed. “I mean. I used to. I used to have a band and stuff.”

Patrick looks at him, eyes bright with what looks like genuine interest behind his glasses. “Yeah? And you played bass?”

“And sang.”

“You can sing?”

“No,” says Pete. “That’s why it’s not still a band.”

Patrick laughs a little. He’s still standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, because the only place to sit is Pete’s bed.

Pete moves the records he has scattered all over the bed to make some room. “Have a seat.”

Patrick hesitates, then sits delicately, like he’s unsure.

Then he says, “I play the drums.”

Pete is surprised and delighted. “Really?”

“Don’t sound so shocked,” Patrick says drily. “Academics can do things, too.”

“No, I know,” Pete says hastily. “I just, like, that’s awesome. Do you play in a band?”

“I used to.” Patrick sounds wistful.

“Ex-bands are the worst,” Pete says sympathetically. “They’re worse than ex-lovers. They just haunt you.”

Patrick shudders.

Pete cocks his head at him. “You okay?”

Patrick glances over at Pete’s window suspiciously and says, “Yeah, sure, fine.” Then he turns back to Pete and says shyly, “You know, I was trying to set some of your great-grandfather’s poems to music.”

Fuck, Patrick gets better and better. “You write music?” Pete practically bounces with excitement on the bed. “Me, too! Well, lyrics, mostly.”

Patrick looks at him flatly for a second, then says, “Hang on. You write _lyrics_?”

This isn’t a thing Pete usually lets slip so easily. He shrugs and tries to say casually, “Well, like, yeah, I mean, I try at least—”

“You write _poetry_?” Patrick interrupts.

Pete winces. _Of fucking course_ Patrick is already back on the topic of the first Peter Wentz. “Not really,” he says. “I mean, not as good as him.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Patrick says earnestly. “I’m sure you’re really talented.”

Pete lifts an eyebrow at him. “Oh, yeah? Why?”

“Because I’m kind of miffed at Peter Wentz right now,” grumbles Patrick, “so fuck him, I bet you’re a better poet.”

“You’re miffed at the dead dude?” says Pete, amused.

“Look.” Patrick clambers more fully onto the bed. “I know we just met and you have no reason to believe me, but I’m not usually a hysterical person.”

“You’re not very funny?” Pete says quizzically. It seems like a weird announcement to make.

“No, I’m _hilarious_,” Patrick says, sounding annoyed. “I mean hysterical, as in overreacting. I don’t overreact.”

“I thought you were going to have an orgasm from seeing my great-grandfather’s bed,” Pete points out wryly.

Patrick blushes _so_ gorgeously. He’s really unfairly pretty, sitting right there on Pete’s bed, in all these soft, touchable fabrics. He says, “I wasn’t—That’s—Look—That room is haunted.”

Pete lifts his eyebrows. “Haunted?”

“_Yes_. Look. I’m all wet.” Patrick rolls over, and just like that he’s sprawled on his stomach on Pete’s bed.

Pete stares down at the curve of Patrick’s ass, presented to him like the surf-and-turf special at the restaurant in town.

“See?” Patrick says.

“I see, yeah,” Pete says, strangled, and clenches his hand into a fist in the bedspread to keep from cupping Patrick’s rear.

“Your great-grandfather did that,” Patrick announces triumphantly.

“Your ass?” Pete says without thinking.

Patrick shifts his head to look up at him. “Huh?”

“I mean,” Pete corrects hastily. “I mean, sorry, okay.” Pete looks at something that’s not Patrick’s ass, which is his back, which is wet. “Sorry, I see now, your back is wet.”

“Right. It rained on me. Inside. Even though the window was closed. Someone threw rain at me. Peter Wentz threw rain at me.”

Patrick seems really committed to this belief, and Pete is really committed to this view of Patrick’s ass. He says, “So this is supernatural rain?” in the hope that it will keep Patrick sprawled deliciously next to him a little while longer. “From the spirit realm?”

“I mean, I guess.” Patrick huffs. “I don’t know how ghosts work. He’s your great-grandfather, I don’t know.”

“You know I never met him, right? He died when my grandfather was, like, three.”

“Four-and-a-half,” Patrick mumbles into Pete’s pillow, like he can’t help himself.

Pete smiles down at him, and decides to push his luck. “Can I touch it?”

“What?” Patrick asks, sounding justifiably concerned.

“The supernatural rain,” Pete says. “I mean, I might be able to collect scientific evidence about it.”

“You’re hardly a ghost expert, you didn’t even know your great-grandfather was haunting this house.”

“Look,” Pete says, “he seems to be haunting _you_, I’ve never been rained on.”

“Go ahead and touch it,” Patrick commands petulantly.

Pete lays a hand flat against Patrick’s back, which is undeniably wet, and also so warm, that surprising warmth of another human, of skin not your own, of blood thrumming through another body. Patrick breathes steadily, his back rising and falling, and Pete keeps his hand steady against him.

He doesn’t realize how long they’re sitting like that in silence until Patrick breaks it, rasping out, “So? Does it feel supernatural?”

Patrick sounds... Patrick sounds like Pete should move his hand a bit. Pete inches it downward slowly, sweeping across Patrick’s damp t-shirt, until it rests so low on Patrick’s back that it might be classified more accurately as the beginning of Patrick’s ass.

Patrick is no longer breathing steadily. His breaths are harsh against Pete’s pillow.

Pete says thoughtfully, “The thing is...” He brushes his hand over the curve of Patrick’s ass and Patrick’s hips twitch against the bed, his breath stuttering. “It’s, like, so hard to tell. I probably need to...” Pete swallows, reverses the path of his hand, sliding up under the t-shirt now, against Patrick’s skin. “I probably need to taste it. Taste is how you probably identify supernatural rain.”

“Yeah, I read that once,” Patrick chokes out.

Pete smiles and thinks he might as well fucking _go_ for it. He’s already hard, and he has no desire to hide it, as he swings a leg over to straddle Patrick’s thighs. He inches forward to nudge his dick against the cleft of Patrick’s ass, and Patrick makes a helpless sound, and then Pete leans forward to mouth at his t-shirt, sucking up the wetness on it.

Then he pauses, lifts his head up. “Patrick,” he whispers.

“Don’t stop,” Patrick says, “Christ.”

“No, I just want to say. Like.” Pete leans down so he can press his weight more fully against Patrick, pressing him into the mattress. Patrick makes an approving sound, arching and settling underneath him. “If you poured poison onto your t-shirt and this is how you’re going to murder me, it’s, like, _so_ well-done, I’m really impressed.”

“I’m not murdering you,” Patrick says.

“Listen, I wouldn’t even complain, as long as you let us get off first.”

“Well, yeah,” Patrick says, “it’s a super-slow-acting poison that’s not going to affect your ability to get it up.”

Pete thrusts against Patrick’s ass and smirks, “Clearly.”

Patrick says, “All the same, you’d better hurry up the pace, I don’t want you to drop dead with your dick in my ass, that would be so inconvenient.”

“You’re laughing at me,” Pete says, scraping his teeth along the back of Patrick’s neck, “but ‘bookish academic’ is the exact cover story a murderer would use.”

“You’ve got a grim imagination,” Patrick groans out, as Pete dips his fingertips into his sweatpants.

“Runs in the family,” Pete says. “That and a really great dick.”

“Oh, my God,” Patrick says, “hurry up and fuck me before I change my mind.”

***

Patrick did not expect when he arrived in this tiny town that morning that his day was going to end with a blowjob. Like, Patrick Stump’s days decidedly do _not_ end with blowjobs as a general rule. Definitely not blowjobs from golden-eyed hot guys with lickable tattoos all over their gorgeous skin and annoyingly kissable lips that look sogoodsogoodsogood wrapped around Patrick.

Patrick would be stunned even if Pete was terrible at sucking cock, but Pete is far from terrible at this.

Patrick tries to tell him that, his hands caught in Pete’s dark hair, he’s trying to be polite and not tug or thrust, although Pete looks like he wouldn’t mind either, and he gasps, “You’re—so good—”

Pete’s eyes are steady on his, as he slides a-l-l the way down, and Patrick’s hips jerk, he can’t help it, and he says, “Oh, fuck—” and honestly, he means to roll his eyes back in his head and just _collapse_, except that in the movement, out of the corner of his eyes, he’s, like, _absolutely convinced _there’s a shadowy figure floating by the bed watching them.

Patrick yelps and jumps and Pete chokes, scrambling backward in reaction.

“Dude, what the fuck,” he complains, wiping at his mouth.

Patrick is staring off toward the side of the bed, which is thoroughly empty. “There was… There was…”

Pete looks unimpressed. “There was a dick,” he says. “There was my mouth. It was a blowjob. It was a good one, too. I’m good at that.”

He sounds offended, and Patrick doesn’t blame him. He was in the middle of a really good blowjob, and he stopped it because he thought there was a _ghost_.

“Sorry,” Patrick says, sitting up. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. My turn.” He pushes Pete down onto the bed with determination. Somehow the focus had been entirely on Patrick and Pete’s still wearing his jeans. His eyes are bright and dark at the same time as he watches Patrick divest him of them, as Patrick stretches out to tease at the cock still trapped in his briefs. “I’m pretty good at this, too,” he promises.

“Yeah?” says Pete, his hands settling in Patrick’s hair. “Let’s have a contest.”

Patrick laughs and mouths at Pete and Pete arches toward him, tugging him forward in invitation, with a breathless _oh_. And Pete is lovely, Pete is perfect, it’s been a while since Patrick has done this but Pete’s dick is up there in the pantheon of dicks Patrick’s sucked and Pete makes beautiful noises and says Patrick’s name in this really incredible way that every time he says it it’s going straight to Patrick’s cock and he’s got Pete close, he can tell he has him close, and he wants to make him explode, wants to make him fall to pieces, Pete’s hands are urgent in his hair and his voice is panting, “Patrick, Patrick, _fuck_, oh, fuck—” and then ice cold hands cover Patrick’s eyes, his vision blacking out.

He freezes in panic, his rhythm faltering, and Pete keens and says, “Fuck, oh, fuck, don’t _stop_, Jesus—” flailing at him.

Patrick’s vision comes back, the ghostly hands fall away from him, as Pete tugs him upward, kissing him sloppy, moaning into his mouth and pulling Patrick’s hand to his dick. And then Pete’s got a hand on Patrick’s dick and Patrick is abruptly close enough to coming that he manages to forget all about the ghost hands, like, _that’s_ how good Pete’s very real hand on him feels. Things are confused, it’s a fumble of frantic friction, Pete comes with a groan and then bites into Patrick’s ear, “Fucking come for me, Trick,” and Patrick goes off like a shot.

Afterward, for a glorious blissful moment, it’s all just postcoital laziness. Pete crawls out from under him enough to breathe, and Patrick manages to roll the rest of the way off of him, and then he croaks out, “I forgot how much better that is when someone _else’s_ hand is the one on your dick,” and then wishes he hadn’t said that.

Pete giggles, breathless and pleased-sounding, and says, “You’ve got to get the fuck out of the library, snack bar.”

“Don’t call me that,” Patrick says, closing his eyes.

“It’s such a sexy nickname,” Pete murmurs, and then cuddles close to him, whispering in his ear, “Snack bar.”

“Is that you being sexy? You’re not being sexy,” Patrick tells him, not at all harshly.

Pete laughs and kisses his cheek and says, “Wow, I’m so glad you came up with the ghost story excuse to get into my bed.”

Which makes Patrick’s eyes fly open, abruptly remembering. _Fuck_, that had been a good orgasm to drive _that_ out of his head. “No, no.” He sits up. “There _is_ a ghost.”

Pete, in fucked disarray on his bed, flops his hair out of his eyes and says, “Patrick, there’s no such thing as—”

“He was watching us,” Patrick insists.

“My great-grandfather was watching us have sex?” Pete echoes. “Christ, I really hope not.”

This gives Patrick pause. “You’re right. It’s doubly gross. He’s a ghost _and_ your relative. He’s a gross relative. You have a gross relative.”

“I mean, honestly, I’m not even surprised,” sighs Pete. “He was a weird dude.” Pete rolls out of bed and disappears into the adjoining bathroom.

“That’s mean,” Patrick says. “How come I’m the one getting haunted when you’re the one who’s mean to him?”

“I’m not mean.” Pete comes back with a damp washcloth and hands it to Patrick. “I’m just being honest. The guy was very dedicated to his particular kinks. I mean, I don’t judge. If you want to have a sex swing, go ahead and have a sex swing, my dude. But don’t spy on your great-grandkid having sex, like, ew, do something else from beyond the grave.”

Patrick is so astonished by this, he’s not even wiping up the mess on his stomach. “He had a _sex swing_?”

Pete lifts his eyebrows. “You haven’t gotten to that point in the diary yet? Clean up, I want to cuddle.” Pete leans over and takes care of things, since Patrick’s so distracted.

“He didn’t have a sex swing. He was devoted all his life to your grandfather’s mother. And then to her memory when she tragically died in childbirth giving birth to your grandfather Sonnet.”

Pete snorts. “He had a parade of people through this place. Orgies everywhere. What do you think is up with the lighting?” Then he turns and disappears back into the bathroom.

Pete has a nice ass and the view of it is _almost_ nice enough to make Patrick forget about this line of inquiry. Almost. “Orgies? With who?”

Pete shrugs as he comes back into the bedroom. “Everyone. You know, that army of ‘dear friends’ he was always writing letters to.”

Patrick knits his eyebrows together. “Those were his friends, he wasn’t… He wasn’t sleeping with them.”

Pete gives him a look. “He calls them ‘darling’ and ‘sweetheart.’”

“They were close,” Patrick falters.

“He calls them ‘_lover_.’”

“That was…an affectation of the time.”

“He writes about how glorious it is to share their beds with them.”

“I mean, it was cold back then, houses weren’t heated properly,” Patrick says.

“Patrick. My great-grandfather was getting a lot of dick. Let’s just leave it at that.” Pete climbs back into the bed.

“Wait.” Patrick frowns. “No. We can’t. All of this is…beside the point.”

“Yeah, the point is _our_ dicks, not his,” says Pete.

“No, the _point is_ that this house is haunted.”

“No, it’s not,” Pete says patiently.

“It _is_. Someone covered my eyes while I was blowing you and I went _blind_.”

“Maybe sucking my dick just made you, like, momentarily blind with lust,” suggests Pete.

He appears to be serious in this suggestion. “No,” says Patrick flatly.

“Patrick, can we go to sleep and talk about this in the morning?”

“You want to cuddle in the middle of your haunted house?”

“Yes,” says Pete. “That is _exactly_ what I want to do.”

“Well, I mean.” Patrick considers it for a second but he doesn’t know what else to do. And the idea of cuddling does sound nice, he hasn’t done that in a while. “Fine. I guess.”

Pete grins at him. “In the morning I’m going to ravish you again.” And then he raises his voice. “Hear that, Great-Grandpa? Don’t stay and spy on us. That would be gross.”

Patrick really hopes the first Peter Wentz listens to the current one, because that ravishing thing sounds nice. Pete shuts off the light, and Patrick is thinking of being ravished when he falls asleep.

***

Pete wakes up to a hot academic in his bed. Like, things have been worse in his life. Much, much worse.

Patrick is sweet in sleep, even more boyish-looking than he is while awake, and he’s pretty boyish-looking. The stubble along his jaw is red, pink like the dawn, it makes Pete want to write bad poetry, which is the only kind Pete ever writes.

Pete looks around his bedroom, bright with the new morning, bright with joy and promise. Suddenly Pete loves this house, this _ridiculous_ house, because it sent Patrick wandering into him, and Patrick feels like fucking fate to Pete. Pete doesn’t know where he’s going but he feels like he’s got room for one more troubled soul with him on the journey, and Patrick fits nicely. He can tell that Patrick’s been lonely, maybe as lonely as Pete, and that suits Pete just fine: They can be alone together.

Of course, he’s known Patrick less than a day, so this is Pete getting ahead of himself, as usual. He’ll probably freak Patrick out if he says any of this. And Patrick is already freaked out because he thinks the house is haunted, which is absurd, Pete’s never seen any evidence of a literal ghost, just the figurative ghost that lives here with him.

“I thought you were going to ravish me in the morning,” Patrick’s sleepy voice interrupts his thoughts.

Pete chuckles and looks down at him. “Oh, sorry, am I taking too long?”

“Way too long, c’mere,” Patrick says, and hauls him closer, but then seems too tired to do anything about it, settling back toward sleep. “Time is it?” he slurs out.

“Oh, I don’t know,” answers Pete. “Dawn.”

“_Dawn_?” Patrick echoes. “Christ, it’s way too early, go back to sleep.”

Pete’s never been much of a sleeper. He says, “I was thinking that maybe I could go into town and get us breakfast? The bakery makes great cinnamon rolls.”

“See,” says Patrick, “I feel like this is all a dream, sex _and_ cinnamon rolls.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Pete says, before twisting away to get dressed.

Patrick stills him by asking hesitantly, “Is this weird? Maybe this is weird? What...happened?”

Pete pauses, then deliberately keeps pulling his underwear on. “I mean. I fuck every hot academic who shows up at the door, so it’s not weird for me.”

“Do you?” asks Patrick.

Pete looks at him. Patrick looks _serious_. “No. Patrick. I told you, you’re the first one.”

“Okay. So why’d you fuck me?”

“Because you’re hot,” says Pete. “Why’d you fuck me?”

“Because you’re _actually_ hot,” Patrick answers, with a wry twist of his lips.

“Stop it,” Pete says, as he pulls a long-sleeved t-shirt over his head. “I’ll be back.”

He leans over the bed, with the foolish intention of kissing Patrick good-bye or something, but Patrick tips his head and closes a hand into his collar instead, saying seriously, “I didn’t fuck you because your name is Peter Wentz.”

And maybe Pete has been kind of wondering that but he just replies heartily, “Good to know.”

“I mean it. I fucked you because, like, you’re hot, yeah, but you’ve been really nice to me and I just—I should stop talking because I sound so pathetic, you’re never going to sleep with me ever again.”

Pete smiles at him. “It’s all good. I think you’re nice, too. I’m glad you love my great-grandfather's emo poetry enough to show up here.”

Patrick’s voice sounds wonderstruck as he says, “Me, too.”

***

After Pete leaves, Patrick tries to fall back to sleep but he can’t. He is thinking of the odd twists and turns of his life; how, rejected from a band, bored and lonely, he’d found a forgotten volume of poetry in the last shelf of the library, where he’d gone to hide; how, fancying himself a songwriter at the time, he’d taken that volume of poetry home; how that poetry had seared into his soul, the dark sardonic edges of it; how he’d later realized nobody really knew who Peter Wentz was; how another band rejection had led to him finally deciding to stay in school for lack of anything better to do; how a dissertation on Peter Wentz seemed inevitable after that.

And then he’d arrived at this house, and he’d met Pete, and now he thinks, _Maybe that was the point all along?_ Which seems ridiculous, the world doesn’t work that way.

Does it?

Patrick doesn’t know. What he does know is that he doesn’t want to spend the day reading Peter Wentz’s diaries, something he’d frankly been dreaming about for weeks now. He wants to spend the day with Pete. Maybe they can talk music. They’ll listen to music. Maybe Patrick will get Pete to sing for him, some of the songs Patrick’s written, he doesn’t believe that Pete doesn’t sing…

He dozes off, and wakes to the whisper of _Patrick, Patrick_ in his ear.

“Mmm,” he says, and stretches and smiles. “Did you bring me cinnamon rolls?” He opens his eyes, and he’s looking into Pete’s eyes, only not. There’s less gold in them, more outright brown, less of that hazel tint that Patrick really loves about Pete’s eyes. They’re Pete’s eyes _but not_.

Patrick scrambles fully awake, shrinking back against the headboard, which doesn’t exactly put all that much space between him and…the ghost? “Jesus Christ,” Patrick breathes.

This person who isn’t quite Pete studies him with narrowed eyes, like _he’s_ the curiosity. The not-Pete, the carnival-mirror-version-of-Pete, is dressed in a blousy shirt, gaping open, and skin-tight pants. His dark hair is long and tied at the nape of his neck with a ribbon. His mouth is frownier than Pete’s, and there are fewer laugh lines around his eyes.

Patrick says loudly, “I would like to wake up now.”

“So you’re _Patrick_,” says the ghost of Peter Wentz. He doesn’t sound impressed.

“Who are you?” Patrick manages.

The ghost raises his eyebrows. “Really?” it says. “_Really_?”

“You died, like, a hundred years ago,” Patrick points out. He thinks that’s a reasonable point.

The ghost says, “Right. So what do you think I am, hotshot academic?”

Patrick frowns. “You’re kind of mean.”

The ghost lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “Don’t meet your heroes.”

“I’m going to go back to sleep now,” Patrick decides. This isn’t the way he wants to start his day.

The ghost snorts and says, “You’re all wrong.”

“Excuse me?” says Patrick hotly.

“This little…_paper_ you’re writing on me.”

“It’s a dissertation,” Patrick retorts.

Peter Wentz’s ghost looks unimpressed. “Whatever it is, it’s totally wrong. You’re way off.”

“Is this why you’re haunting me? Seriously? You don’t like my dissertation? Jesus, the thing is, like, _literally cursed_,” moans Patrick.

“It’s wrong. Your interpretations of my poetry are wrong.”

“Yeah, well, the author is dead,” Patrick informs the ghost, and he can’t believe his morning is arguing with the ghost of Peter Wentz, but apparently, yeah. “_Literally_ dead.”

The ghost scowls. “That’s very rude of you, you know, to keep pointing out I’m dead. You’re a very rude little man.”

“I’m not little. You’re not so tall yourself, you know. I’ve read your contemporaries describing you as ‘short.’”

“I wasn’t talking about your height,” the ghost smirks.

Patrick gapes at him. “Hang on, are you talking about my _dick_? Because there’s no way your dick is bigger than my dick and am I really having this conversation with the ghost of Peter Wentz?”

“Should we compare?” the ghost asks, and goes to move away with his hands on his waistband.

Patrick tries to grab him, but his hand passes right through him. The ghost winces as Patrick says, “Jesus Christ, _no_, I do not want to see your dick, this is gross, you know I slept with your great-grandson, right?”

“Yeah, about that.” The ghost, thankfully, drops his hands from his pants. “What are your intentions toward him?”

“My what?” asks Patrick blankly.

“He’s a good kid. My great-grandson. I’ve been watching him around here, and he’s…lonely. I’m not going to let some really terrible poetry critic take advantage of him.”

“I can’t believe you think _I’m_ rude,” Patrick points out. “And I’m not taking advantage of him.”

“He has a poet’s soul, okay? He is a kindred spirit. My son and _his_ son – they were both utterly pointless. This is the first one who…” The ghost gets an expression on his face that Patrick might have called _pride_, except it seems out-of-character for this particular asshole ghost. But there’s something very soft around the ghost’s expression, and he practically beams as he tips his head closer to Patrick and confides, “He writes really beautiful poetry. Better than mine. He’s who you should be paying attention to. Instead of misinterpreting mine to be some failed romance dreck, I got so much ass, I wasn’t some pathetic, pining fool.”

Patrick ignores that to focus on what he really cares about. “You’ve read Pete’s poetry?”

“I read everything I can. There’s not much to do in the afterlife. Very boring. And my great-grandson doesn’t get much action, so it’s not like there’s anything good to watch, so I spend a lot of time reading.”

“Yeah, that’s…troubling, don’t do that anymore.”

“What?”

“Spy on Pete’s sex, that is really, really gross.”

“You’re a total stick in the mud,” the ghost complains.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Patrick agrees hurriedly, because he wants to get back to Pete’s poetry. Because _Peter Wentz_ thinks it’s better than his. “Pete thinks he’s just writing lyrics.”

The ghost shrugs again. “What does it matter? It’s poetry. It’s beautiful. ‘My mind is a safe, and if I keep it then we all get rich. My body is an orphanage, we take everyone in.’”

“Is that some of his poetry?”

“‘And I want it so bad, I’d shoot the sunshine into my veins.’ Isn’t that a beautiful image? Shooting sunshine into veins? I love that.” The ghost looks genuinely pleased.

“It is pretty,” Patrick agrees faintly. It makes his chest squeeze tightly together, the way good poetry does, the way Patrick felt furtively tucking a battered volume of Peter Wentz into his bag that day long ago. It sits heavily just underneath his ribcage, where his heart is supposed to be beating, where he carries poetry.

The ghost sighs. “‘If home is where the heart is, then we’re all just fucked.’ I admire him for just using the word ‘fucked.’ Can you believe I never put the word ‘fucked’ into my poetry? What was I thinking? How severely limiting of me! No other word would do there, you know exactly what he means. If home is where the heart is, we are _fucked_.”

The thing about how Patrick hears poetry is…he doesn’t. He hears _songs_. He thinks in music. This is how Pete’s words sit in him: as music.

“Anyway.” Peter Wentz’s ghost looks at Patrick. “Talk more in your paper about how hot I am and how much ass I used to get, and don’t fuck around with my great-grandson if you don’t mean it. Those are my demands.”

“Or what?” asks Patrick vaguely.

“I will haunt you _forever_. Or until I get bored. Which, frankly, might be tomorrow, you live a pretty boring life.”

“You can’t spy on Pete having sex anymore, okay?” Patrick tells him firmly.

The ghost rolls his eyes. “God, you are so boring, _whatever_, fine. Will you talk more in your paper about how much ass I used to get? Tits _and_ dicks, like, no discrimination, I loved me whatever.”

“No,” Patrick says. “I am not going to talk in my dissertation about tits and dicks.”

“_So_ boring,” Peter Wentz says.

“Yeah, I’ve never thought I was interesting,” Patrick replies. “Does this place have a piano?”

***

Pete comes back with cinnamon rolls, and someone is playing the piano. For a moment, he thinks maybe Patrick was right about the place being haunted, but when he creeps over to the door of the conservatory, it’s Patrick who’s sitting at the piano, his red-gold hair by far the brightest thing in the dreary room.

“Is that piano even in tune?” Pete asks curiously.

“No, it’s awful,” Patrick says without looking up from the keys.

“I didn’t know you played.” Pete wanders into the room.

“You don’t?” Patrick replies, glancing at him.

“My dad tried to make me take lessons when I was a kid. It didn’t take.”

“You decided to play bass instead.”

“And I thought you decided to play the drums,” Pete points out.

“I play the drums, yes. That doesn’t mean I don’t play other things, too.”

“What other things?”

“The piano.”

“Obviously.”

“Also other things,” says Patrick negligently. “Listen to this.” He plays something on the piano and then sings over it, “If home is where the heart is, then we’re all just fucked, and I want it so bad, I’d shoot the sunshine into my veins.”

Pete goes very still. He stares at Patrick. He says, strangled, “How do you know those lines?”

Patrick opens his mouth, closes his mouth, opens it again. “Fuck.”

“Where did you… How did you…” Pete’s monumentally confused, because yeah, he wrote those lines, in a notebook that he lost weeks ago. He can’t find it anywhere. He’s been fucking annoyed about it. “Did you find that notebook?” He’s almost not even annoyed Patrick’s been snooping, if he found the notebook.

“No,” Patrick says carefully. “So. This is, like, a thing I’m going to say and I really need you to believe me.” Patrick looks so solemn. Pete braces himself. “Your great-grandfather reads your poetry.” 

“Huh?” Pete says blankly.

“He reads your poetry. He recited those lines to me.”

“He…” Pete stares at Patrick.

Patrick, after a moment, sings, “My mind is a safe, and if I keep it then we all get rich.”

“My body is an orphanage,” Pete whispers.

“We take everyone in,” Patrick finishes for him.

“Fuck.” Pete sinks onto the piano bench with Patrick. “You… What…” Pete stares at Patrick. Because either Patrick found the lost notebook and he’s lying about it to Pete to aid his outrageous story about a ghost, which would be truly sociopathic, or the outrageous story about a ghost is true. And Patrick… Patrick might be a sociopath. Pete admittedly doesn’t know a whole hell of a lot about it. But it would break Pete’s heart for Patrick to be a sociopath. He likes him so very much more than he’s liked anybody in a long time. He’d much rather believe in his great-grandfather’s ghost. So he says, “There’s a ghost.”

“There’s a ghost.” Patrick nods.

Pete looks around the empty room. “Is he here?”

Patrick’s eyes flicker to the corner. “Yes.”

Pete turns to look at the corner, which is completely empty. He frowns in frustration. “Why can’t I see him?”

“I don’t know,” says Patrick. “I don’t know how it works. Why can’t Pete see you?”

“Hang on, you can _talk_ to him?” says Pete, and then remembers that supposedly that’s how Patrick got the lyrics.

Patrick scowls and looks back at Pete. “Your great-grandfather is not a very helpful ghost.”

“What did he say?”

“That if you could see him, that would mean he’d have to stop spying on you having sex.”

Pete wrinkles his nose. “He really spies on me having sex?” Pete pauses. “I don’t have much sex.”

“He knows,” Patrick confirms grimly.

“Well, gee, _this_ isn’t an embarrassing conversation,” remarks Pete, then narrows his eyes. “Does he spy on jerk-off sessions? Because I think that’s even grosser.”

“Can we not talk about this anymore?” Patrick begs. “I really, really want to not talk about Peter Wentz’s incestuous voyeurism, Christ.”

Pete can’t help that his lips twitch with a smile. “Going to put that in your dissertation?”

“_No_,” Patrick says emphatically.

Pete outright laughs. He really, really can’t help it. Because whatever, his great-grandfather is a disgusting ghost, but Patrick wrote a _song_ for him. “Can you play me the song again?”

Patrick looks hesitantly hopeful. “Really?”

“Patrick, it was beautiful,” Pete says earnestly, because nobody’s ever written him a song before. It makes him want to find every notebook he’s ever scrawled in and thrust them all at Patrick. _Here. Have my entire heart. Make it beautiful_.

Patrick plays the song again, and Pete watches him in awe. He says when Patrick’s done, “You have the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard.”

Patrick blushes prettily. “No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. You really, really do. _Patrick_. I have a really great idea.” Pete scoots closer on the piano bench.

Patrick regards him warily. “What’s your great idea?”

“Let’s form a band,” Pete suggests eagerly. “We could be a great band. I can write the lyrics and you can write the music and you can sing.”

“And who else is in this band? Your great-grandfather’s ghost?”

“No, I have musical friends, Patrick, I used to be in bands. Also, Peter Wentz didn’t play any musical instruments. He used to spend all his time getting a lot of dick.”

“Okay, weirdly, your great-grandfather is so pleased that that’s what you keep telling me about him.”

“Knew he would be. Got you covered, Gramps.” Pete sends a thumbs-up toward the corner where Patrick can apparently see the ghost. “So. What do you say, teacher’s pet? Stay here and form a band with me?”

“I’m not the teacher’s pet. And we just met. I can’t just stop doing my dissertation because we had some good sex.”

“Good?” says Pete.

“I’m not going to sell us short, I think we can do better,” Patrick says primly.

Pete grins, wide and loose. Patrick makes him feel more like _himself_ than he has in ages, like he’s been hibernating in this haunted house waiting to be set free. He says, “Okay, agreed, I bet we can work together to hit our sexual stride. And _I_ bet our sexual stride would really be helped by making music together.” Pete sidles even closer. “I bet you’re really extra-sexy when you sing and play a tuned piano. Fuck, do you play the guitar? Tell me you play the guitar.” Pete blows on Patrick’s ear.

Patrick says, his breathing labored, “I can play the guitar.”

“Oh, fuck, I’m going to get you so hard and make you hide it behind your guitar, like, every performance,” Pete promises. He can envision this clearly and he can’t wait.

“Jesus,” Patrick exhales with feeling.

“Pete,” Pete corrects.

Patrick opens his eyes, which had fluttered closed at some point, and says, “That was the goddamn easiest line in the universe, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Pete squeezes a hand around Patrick’s growing erection. “Yeah, I’m really not.”

Patrick catches a hand into Pete’s collar to pull him close. “Tell your great-grandfather to stop spying on us,” he breathes into Pete’s open, waiting mouth.

“Go away, Grandpa Peter,” Pete murmurs, and kisses Patrick.

***

In an upstairs room of the Peter Wentz House, every possible flat surface is covered with scribbled lyrics and musical notations. Shoved in a dusty corner, under a disfavored guitar and a forgotten dead plant, is a unfinished draft of a dissertation. It would have been a good dissertation. It would have said nice things about Peter Wentz’s poetry. It would not have mentioned dicks or tits.

Patrick set out to make Peter Wentz’s poetry famous, and he does. It just turns out to be a different Peter Wentz.


End file.
